Multi-air pump system

ABSTRACT

A multi-air pump system, including an air pump unit, a control unit and a performance feedback unit, wherein the control unit is connected to the performance feedback unit and the air pump unit, the air pump unit is an air pump assembly with a redundancy design, the control unit controls a switch and an input voltage of each air pump in the air pump unit according to performance monitoring results output by the performance feedback unit, and the redundancy design includes an air pump quantity redundancy and/or voltage redundancy.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

The present application is a continuation of International Application No. PCT/CN2020/100218, with an international filing date of Jul. 3, 2020, which is based upon and claims priority to Chinese Patent Application No. 202010500949.3, filed on Jun. 4, 2020, the entire contents of all of which are incorporated herein by reference.

TECHNICAL FIELD

The present disclosure belongs to the technical field of air pumps, in particular to a multi-air pump system.

BACKGROUND

A micro diaphragm air pump is generally composed of an air pump and a shell, wherein a motor in the air pump may be a DC carbon brush motor, a DC brush motor and a DC brushless motor. The average service life of the existing diaphragm air pump is 500-800 hours, with a shorter service life. When a performance reduction occurs to the air pump, a professional is required to maintain or replace the air pump in time, so the maintenance cost is very high. However, a situation that other equipment needed to be inflated and deflated cannot work normally is caused by the performance reduction of the air pump, thereby affecting the production efficiency or the project progress. Therefore, a method capable of prolonging the service life of the air pump is required to be provided.

SUMMARY

The purpose of embodiments of the present disclosure is to provide a multi-air pump system, so as to solve the problem of short service life of an air pump in the prior art.

The embodiments of the present disclosure are implemented as follows: a multi-air pump system is provided, and the multi-air pump system includes an air pump unit, a control unit and a performance feedback unit, wherein the control unit is connected to the performance feedback unit and the air pump unit in respective, the air pump unit is an air pump assembly with a redundancy design, and the control unit controls a switch and an input voltage of each air pump in the air pump unit according to performance monitoring results output by the performance feedback unit.

Further, the redundancy design includes an air pump quantity redundancy and/or voltage redundancy.

Further, in the air pump quantity redundancy, the air pump quantity in the air pump unit is at least one greater than that required in the actual work.

Further, in the voltage redundancy, an input voltage of the air pump unit is less than a maximum working voltage of the air pump.

Further, the performance feedback unit includes a sensing unit and a performance monitoring unit; the sensing unit is configured to collect characteristic data when the air pump runs, and to transmit the characteristic data to the performance monitoring unit; and the performance monitoring unit judges whether the air pump has performance reduction based on the characteristic data, so as to obtain the performance monitoring results, and then the performance monitoring unit transmits the performance monitoring results to the control unit.

Further, when the performance reduction occurs to the air pump, the control unit improves the input voltage of the air pump, thereby improving the performance of the air pump.

Further, the sensing unit includes any one or more of a sound sensor, an air flow sensor, a pressure sensor, a temperature sensor and a vibration sensor.

The embodiments of the present disclosure further provide a method for prolonging service life of an air pump, and the method includes the following steps:

a redundancy design is arranged in an air pump unit, and the redundancy design includes an air pump quantity redundancy and/or voltage redundancy;

when the air pump is operated, only a number of the air pump meeting the design performance requirement of the system is operated, and the air pump with the redundancy quantity is closed.

Further, the above method includes the following steps:

whether the performance reduction occurring to the operated air pump is detected,

when the performance reduction occurring to the air pump is detected, the air pump with the performance reduction is closed, and when the air pump is operated, only the air pump with the quantity meeting the design performance requirement of the system is operated, or an input voltage of the air pump with performance reduction is improved.

Further, in the step of detecting whether the operated air pump has performance reduction, the detection includes any one or more of sound detection, air flow detection, pressure detection, temperature detection and vibration detection.

The embodiments of the present disclosure further provide a furniture with an intelligent regulation function, and the furniture includes the above multi-air pump system.

Compared with the prior art, the multi-air pump system provided by the present disclosure has the following beneficial effects: the air pump quantity redundancy is adopted, so when the performance reduction occurs to the air pump, the redundancy air pump may ensure the normal work of the system without the situation that the equipment needed to be inflated and deflated cannot work normally once the performance reduction occurs to the air pump, the operation reliability of the system is greatly improved, and in relative to a single air pump, the service life of the air pump can be prolonged. At the same time, the present disclosure implements the effective control for the performance of the air pump based on the effective power supply and saves energy to a certain extent in a manner that the input voltage of the air pump adopts the redundancy design, the performance of the air pump is improved by improving the input voltage of the air pump.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

To better clarify the technical solution in the embodiments of the present disclosure, the drawings required to illustrate the embodiments will be simply described below. It is apparent that the drawings described below merely illustrate some embodiments of the present disclosure. Those of ordinary skill in the art can obtain other drawings without creative labor on the basis of those drawings.

FIG. 1 is a structural schematic diagram of a multi-air pump system provided by embodiments of the present disclosure

FIG. 2 is a flow chart of a method capable of prolonging service life of an air pump provided by embodiments of the present disclosure.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE EMBODIMENTS

In order to make the technical problem to be solved in the present disclosure, technical solution and beneficial effects clearer and definer, the present disclosure will be described in detail below in conjunction with the drawings and the embodiments. It is understood that the specific embodiments described herein are merely used for explaining the present disclosure, instead of limiting the present disclosure.

In the subsequent description, suffixes, such as “module”, “component” and “unit” indicating the element are merely used to facilitate the description of the present disclosure, instead of specific limitation; and “module” may be in mixed use with “unit”.

As shown in FIG. 1 , embodiments of the present disclosure provide a multi-air pump system, which includes an air pump unit, a control unit and a performance feedback unit, wherein the control unit is connected to the performance feedback unit and the air pump unit in respective. The performance feedback unit includes a sensing unit and a performance monitoring unit, the sensing unit is connected to the performance monitoring unit, and the performance monitoring unit is connected to the control unit. The sensing unit is configured to collect characteristic data when the air pump runs, and to transmit the characteristic data to the performance monitoring unit; and the characteristic data includes sound, air flow, pressure, temperature and vibration signals. The performance monitoring unit judges whether the air pump has performance reduction based on the characteristic data, so as to obtain performance monitoring results, and then the performance monitoring unit transmits the performance monitoring results to the control unit. The control unit receives the performance monitoring results and controls a switch and an input voltage of each air pump in the air pump unit according to performance monitoring results.

The multi-air pump system provided by the embodiments of the present disclosure is mainly used as a built-in air pump system, which may be used for intelligent regulation mattresses, intelligent inflatable sofas, inflatable swimming pools and other products, preferably the product with the intelligent regulation function.

The air pump unit includes a plurality of air pumps, namely, two or more than two air pumps. The air pump unit adopts the redundancy design, which includes the air pump quantity redundancy. The air pump quantity redundancy is that the air pump quantity in the air pump unit is greater than the air pump quantity required in the actual work of the multi-air pump system. The air pump unit in the embodiments of the present disclosure includes a redundancy air pump, and the quantity of the redundancy air pump may be one or more, preferably more than two. Since the quantity of the air pump in the air pump unit adopts the redundancy design, when the air pump is operated, only the air pump with the quantity meeting the design performance requirement of the system is operated, and the redundancy air pump is closed.

In the existing product with the built-in air pump, the cost is usually considered and the air pump with the required quantity is set, for example, in the intelligent mattress, six air pumps are required to inflate or deflate six parts of the mattress correspondingly, thereby saving cost and space. However, since the intelligent mattress, the intelligent regulation sofa and other intelligent home are used every day, the occurring performance reduction will seriously affect the rest and experience of users, therefore prolonging the service life and reducing the failure rate are particularly important to intelligent home products. The present disclosure may prolong the service life of the intelligent home products obviously by setting the redundancy air pump.

Specifically, when the air pump is operated, only the air pump with the quantity meeting the design performance requirement of the system is operated, and the redundancy air pump is closed. The performance feedback unit detects whether the operated air pump has performance reduction in real time and transmits the performance monitoring results to the control unit, and the control unit monitors the air pump unit according to the performance monitoring results. If the performance monitoring results show the performance reduction of the air pump, the control unit controls the air pump with performance reduction in the air pump unit to be closed, at the same time, the control unit controls the redundancy air pump with the same quantity as the air pump with performance reduction to be operated, so that the operated air pump in the air pump unit can meet the design performance requirements of the system.

In one specific embodiment of the present disclosure, the air pump unit includes five air pumps, and when the multi-air pump system works normally, only two air pumps are required to meet the design performance requirements of the system. Since three redundancy air pumps are increased, the total working time of the air pump unit can be extended by 150% compared with the total working time of the air pump unit composed of two air pumps, namely, the total working time is 2.5 times of the original working time. That is to say, when the air pump is operated, only two air pumps are operated; when the two operated air pumps have normal performance, three redundancy air pumps are closed, and the working time of the two operated air pumps is controlled to be the same, at this time, the total working time of the air pump unit can be extended by 150%.

When one of the two operated air pumps has performance reduction, the air pump with the performance reduction is closed, and then one redundancy air pump in the three redundancy air pumps is operated, so that the quantity of the operated air pump in the air pump unit is still two, the working time of the two operated air pumps is controlled to be the same, at this time, the total working time of the air pump unit can be extended by 100%. When the two operated air pumps have performance reduction, the two air pumps with the performance reduction are closed, and then two redundancy air pumps in the three redundancy air pumps are operated, so that the quantity of the operated air pump in the air pump unit is still two, the working time of the two operated air pumps is controlled to be the same, at this time, the total working time of the air pump unit can be extended by 50%. When one of the two operated redundancy air pumps has performance reduction, the redundancy air pump with the performance reduction is closed, and then one remaining redundancy air pump is operated, the working time of the two operated air pumps is controlled to be the same, at this time, the total working time of the air pump unit is the same as that of the air pump unit composed of two air pumps.

In other specific embodiments of the present disclosure, the quantity of the air pump in the air pump unit may be other values according to actual application needs. Accordingly, since the air pump with the redundancy quantity is increased, the service life of the air pump unit is prolonged by 0.5-3 times compared with the service life of the air pump required by the normal work of the system in the prior art.

The redundancy design is to increase redundancy equipment, so as to ensure the more reliable and safer work of the system. The redundancy design is also one commonly used technology in a computer, and one of the most effective methods for improving the reliability of a computer system. When an error occurs to the equipment, the redundancy design may reduce the possibility of complete system failure. The multi-air pump system provided by the present disclosure enables the redundancy air pump to ensure the normal work of the system without the situation that the equipment needed to be inflated and deflated cannot work normally once the performance reduction occurs to the air pump when the performance reduction occurs to the air pump in a manner that the air pump unit adopts the air pump quantity redundancy, the operation reliability of the system is greatly improved, and in relative to a single air pump, the service life of the air pump can be prolonged.

On the other hand, each air pump is monitored by setting the performance feedback unit, and the performance reduction must be reported in time, and the air pump monomer with the performance reduction may be replaced in time. Since the intelligent home is used every day, but not for 24 hours, the intelligent home supplier may arrange a worker to replace the air pump monomer with the performance reduction in a time period of not using the intelligent home of a day, without affecting the use of the intelligent home. The door-to-door service time may be appointed a few days later, which will not lead to the situation of not using the intelligent home in relative to the intelligent home products with the required quantity of air pump.

In the embodiments of the present disclosure, the redundancy design of the air pump unit further includes a voltage redundancy. The voltage redundancy is that the input voltage of the air pump unit is less than the actual maximum working voltage (full-load voltage) of the air pump. When the input voltage of the air pump unit exceeds the full-load voltage, the air pump will be burned, and when the input voltage of the air pump unit is equal to or lower than the full-load voltage, the air pump may work normally. For example, the full-load voltage for the normal work of the air pump is 12V, and when the input voltage is 6-12V, the air pump may work normally, and preferably, the input voltage is 6-8V Since the air flow, pressure and other performance parameters of the air pump are in positive correlation with the input voltage of the air pump, when the performance reduction occurs to the air pump, the performance of the air pump may be improved by improving the input voltage of the air pump.

Specifically, when the air pump is operated, the input voltage of each air pump in the arranged air pump unit is a voltage value lower than the full-load voltage, and the performance feedback unit detects whether the air pump in the air pump unit has performance reduction in real time and transmits the performance monitoring results to the control unit, and the control unit controls the air pump unit according to the performance monitoring results. If the performance monitoring results show the performance reduction of the air pump, the control unit improves the input voltage of the air pump with performance reduction so as to improve the performance of the air pump with performance reduction, so that the air pump unit can meet the design performance requirements of the system. For example, if the performance monitoring results show low air flow of a certain air pump, the control unit controls the input voltage rise of the air pump, thereby improving the air flow of the air pump. The embodiments of the present disclosure may implement the effective control for the performance of the air pump based on the effective power supply, and save energy to a certain extent in a manner that the input voltage of the air pump adopts the redundancy design, the performance of the air pump is improved by improving the input voltage of the air pump.

The sensing unit includes any one or the combination of a sound sensor, an air flow sensor, a pressure sensor, a temperature sensor and a vibration sensor. The combination of many different types of sensors is adopted to obtain the characteristic data when the air pump runs, so as to completely collect the performance parameter change when the air pump runs, and improve the detection accuracy of the performance reduction of the air pump.

The sensing unit may be a sound sensor, which collects the sound when the air pump runs, and the performance monitoring unit performs algorithm or logic calculation according to the sound, so as to judge whether the air pump has the performance reduction. Specifically, the air pump has different spectrum during normal operation and performance reduction, and whether the air pump has the performance reduction may be judged by the spectrum identification.

The sensing unit may be an air flow sensor, which collects the air flow when the air pump runs, and the performance monitoring unit performs algorithm or logic calculation according to the air flow, so as to judge whether the air pump has the performance reduction. Specifically, the air tightness of the air pump with the performance reduction or the performance reduction of the motor may result in the reduction of the air flow of the air pump, and when the air flow is reduced obviously, the performance reduction occurring to the air pump may be judged.

The sensing unit may be a pressure sensor, which collects the pressure when the air pump runs, and the performance monitoring unit performs algorithm or logic calculation according to the pressure change when the air pump runs, so as to judge whether the air pump has the performance reduction. Specifically, the poor air tightness of the air pump with the performance reduction or the performance reduction of the motor may result in the reduction of the air flow of the air pump and the inflation pressure, and when the operated air pump is used for inflating and the pressure rise speed is abnormal, the performance reduction occurring to the air pump may be judged.

The sensing unit may be a temperature sensor, which collects the temperature when the air pump runs, and the performance monitoring unit performs algorithm or logic calculation according to the temperature change when the air pump runs, so as to judge whether the air pump has the performance reduction. Specifically, the air pump with the performance reduction may result in abnormal temperature change due to the performance reduction of the motor, and when the abnormal temperature change is detected, the performance reduction occurring to the air pump may be judged.

The sensing unit may be a vibration sensor, which collects the vibration signal when the air pump runs, and the performance monitoring unit performs algorithm or logic calculation according to the vibration signal when the air pump runs, so as to judge whether the air pump has the performance reduction. Specifically, the air pump with the performance reduction may result in abnormal motor vibration due to the performance reduction of the motor and the brush, the motor does not vibrate when not rotating, when the performance reduction occurs to the brush, the vibration frequency is not accurate, and when the abnormal vibration is detected, the performance reduction occurring to the air pump may be judged.

The control unit may be one or more of a single chip computer, a microcomputer, a FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) or other programmable devices.

Referring to FIG. 2 , the embodiments of the present disclosure further provide a method capable of prolonging service life of an air pump, and the method includes the following steps:

an air pump with a redundancy quantity is arranged;

when the air pump is operated, only the air pump with the quantity meeting the design performance requirement of the system is operated, and the redundancy air pump is closed;

whether the performance reduction occurring to the operated air pump is detected;

when the performance reduction of the air pump is detected, all air pumps are closed firstly, and then each air pump is operated for detection in turn, so as to judge whether each air pump has the performance reduction, and then to obtain the performance monitoring results;

the air pump with the performance reduction is closed according to the performance monitoring results, and when the air pump is operated, only the air pump with the quantity meeting the design performance requirement of the system is operated, or an input voltage of the air pump with performance reduction is improved.

In relative to the inflation or deflation by a single air pump, the service life of the air pump may be prolonged by the above method. When the performance reduction occurs to the air pump, the normal work of the multi-air pump system can be ensured by opening the redundancy air pump or improving the input voltage of the air pump with the performance reduction.

The quantity of the redundancy air pump may be one or more, preferably, more than two. In a specific embodiment, the quantity of the redundancy air pump may be more than double of the quantity of the required air pump.

In the above step of detecting whether the operated air pump has performance reduction, the detection includes any one or more of sound detection, air flow detection, pressure detection, temperature detection and vibration detection.

In one specific embodiment of the present disclosure, the air pump unit includes five air pumps, and when the multi-air pump system works normally, only two air pumps are required to meet the design performance requirements of the system. A method capable of prolonging service life of an air pump includes the following steps:

when the air pump is operated, only two air pumps are operated and three redundancy air pumps are closed; and since three redundancy air pumps are increased, the total working time of the air pump unit can be extended by 150%;

when the performance reduction of the air pump in the two operated air pumps is detected, each air pump is operated in turn for detection, so as to judge whether each air pump has the performance reduction, and then to obtain the performance monitoring results;

when one of the two operated air pumps has performance reduction according to the performance monitoring results, the air pump with the performance reduction is closed, and then one redundancy air pump in the three redundancy air pumps is operated, at this time, the total working time of the air pump unit can be extended by 100%;

when the two operated air pumps have performance reduction according to the performance monitoring results, the two air pumps with the performance reduction are closed, and then two redundancy air pumps in the three redundancy air pumps are operated, at this time, the total working hour of the air pump unit can be extended by 50%.

when one of the two operated redundancy air pumps has performance reduction according to the performance monitoring results, the redundancy air pump with the performance reduction is closed, and then one remaining redundancy air pump is operated, at this time, the total working time of the air pump unit is the same as that of the air pump unit composed of two air pumps.

In addition, functional units in each embodiment of the present disclosure may be integrated into one processing unit, or each unit may have separate physical existence, or two or more units may be integrated in one unit. The integrated unit may be implemented in a hardware form, or may be implemented in form of a software program module.

The embodiments of the present disclosure further provide a furniture or an electronic product with an intelligent regulation function, such as intelligent regulation mattresses, intelligent regulation sofas, intelligent regulation inflatable swimming pool, and these furniture or electronic products include the above multi-air pump system.

The above is only optional embodiments of the present disclosure and not intended to limit the present disclosure. Any modifications, equivalent replacements, improvements and the like made within the spirit and principle of the present disclosure shall fall within the protection scope of the present disclosure. 

What is claimed is:
 1. A multi-air pump system, comprising: an air pump unit, a control unit and a performance feedback unit, wherein the control unit is connected to both the performance feedback unit and the air pump unit, the air pump unit is an air pump assembly with a redundancy design, and the control unit is configured to control a switch and an input voltage of each air pump in the air pump unit according to a performance monitoring result output by the performance feedback unit.
 2. The multi-air pump system of claim 1, wherein the redundancy design comprises an air pump quantity redundancy and/or voltage redundancy.
 3. The multi-air pump system of claim 2, wherein in the air pump quantity redundancy, an air pump quantity in the air pump unit is at least one greater than an air pump quantity required in actual work.
 4. The multi-air pump system of claim 2, wherein in the voltage redundancy, an input voltage of the air pump unit is less than a maximum working voltage of the air pump.
 5. The multi-air pump system of claim 1, wherein the performance feedback unit comprises a sensing unit and a performance monitoring unit; the sensing unit is configured to collect characteristic data when the air pump runs, and to transmit the characteristic data to the performance monitoring unit; and the performance monitoring unit judges whether the air pump has performance reduction based on the characteristic data so as to obtain the performance monitoring result, and then the performance monitoring unit transmits the performance monitoring result to the control unit.
 6. The multi-air pump system of claim 5, wherein when the performance reduction occurs to the air pump, the control unit improves the input voltage of the air pump.
 7. The multi-air pump system of claim 1, wherein the sensing unit comprises one or more selected from the group consisting of a sound sensor, an air flow sensor, a pressure sensor, a temperature sensor and a vibration sensor.
 8. A method for prolonging service life of an air pump, comprising: arranging a redundancy design in an air pump unit, wherein the redundancy design comprises an air pump quantity redundancy and/or voltage redundancy; and when the air pump is operated, only such a number of air pumps that meet the design performance requirement of the system being operated, and the air pump of redundancy quantity being closed.
 9. The method of claim 8, wherein the method further comprises: whether the performance reduction occurring to the operated air pump is detected; and when the performance reduction occurring to the air pump is detected, the air pump with the performance reduction is closed, and when the air pump is operated, only a number of the air pump meeting the design performance requirement of the system is operated, or an input voltage of the air pump with the performance reduction is increased.
 10. The method of claim 9, wherein in the step of detecting whether the operated air pump has performance reduction, the detection comprises one or more selected from the group consisting of sound detection, air flow detection, pressure detection, temperature detection and vibration detection. 